For some reason, actually a very good reason, it seems natural to append an exclamation mark to the first part of the title and if you think of it, even for a moment, you know why it is. The very idea of an Australian buying a crystal or having the remotest interest in crystal healing seems so ludicrous, so far out, as to be a bit of a joke. Australians just aren’t into crystals. They’re mutually exclusive!
We just don’t think of Australians being like that. Connecting them with crystal healing is like associating them with Charles Dickens or Pablo Picasso and they themselves wouldn’t link these names with writers or artists. They’re more likely to think of them as brands of lager or sausage.
Yer mate there’s some really great Dicko on the barbie… Could be a real chucker with a chiller of Pico when yer ready sport..
Now as rule we don’t meet too many Australians. That’s because there aren’t many. Apart from the occasional tourist there’s a small colony of them living in London. Most of what we know about them comes from media sports casts or history programs telling us what good soldiers they were and how they all love the Queen and want to stay part of the Empire. That’s just the BBC, the British Establishment channel with its head permanently up its arse. The truth is that actually most of them don’t. Not anymore. Our knowledge is mainly around sport and that they seem to be a tough, outdoors, on the beach, kind of people. They’re not known for being philosophers, poets, composers, artists or creative thinkers in general, or being reflective and introspective. In a word having a soft side. The idea of an Australian being into crystals is more likely to be condemned with that well known Australian adjective, poofter, as much as anything else.
Good or bad, useful or not as stereotypes go, the above images are exactly the way they see themselves and just as important, how they like to be seen, poofters excluded of course. The market fraternity with all their ornaments, crystals and fancy paints can keep their Mozart whackeroo culture. We got Fosters!
But that said there is another altogether less wholesome side to Australia. Indeed, how much do you really know about it? We’re you aware, for example, that many thousands of Australian women from poor backgrounds were forced to give up their children for adoption into the households of wealthy families from the 1950s all the way up to the late 1970s. Were you aware that Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany who arrived in Britain hoping for sanctuary were forcibly deported to Australia and spent the war years interned in concentration camps in Australian deserts? You weren’t? Well there’s plenty more where that came from if you’re interested to say nothing of what was done to the aboriginal people, out of sight and a long way away in the deserts.
That said, please don’t be too hard on Australians. They come from an island big as Europe half way between China and the South Pole, eighty per-cent of which is desert with only one real river running through it. Ninety per-cent of its people live on its giant empty coastline with most of the interior empty likewise. For a place that big to have a population smaller than Hong Kong causes a bit of a problem especially when you realised that half are descended from convict labour. Irish who don’t care much for the English!
No, these are a tough hardy people who celebrate what they are so the very idea of them stroking a bit of rose quartz for tuning into their sensitive side can be cause for a chuckle. For them healing is something best done with a six pack, better make it twelve! I mean, the idea of an Australian lying on a couch and talking about his mother or even having the vaguest notion of Freud is silly when all that he wants is an hour in a massage parlour somewhere in Thailand.
Australia then is a harsh no nonsense place with a harsh no nonsense climate. It has a harsh no nonsense history with a tiny population in a giant empty land both far removed from the culture and cultural history of the rest of the world, particularly Europe. These are factors that do not necessarily encourage people to believe that crystals are best used for spiritual purposes rather than being industrially processed for the Chinese economy!
Okay, so where does that leave a street market trader with regard to Australians? I’ll tell it as it is. In all the years I’ve been selling crystals, gem trees and minerals, and of all the countless people of all nationalities and races all over the globe, from Pacific Islands to far away regions of Central Asia, from Tierra del Fuego to Timbuktu, from tiny Lichtenstein to tourists from Mali and Greenland, I can’t ever remember selling a crystal to an Australian, but once, maybe ten years ago, I sold a single gem tree from our Tiny range for £6 or so to someone from Melbourne. Ten years ago and I still remember it now!
Australians! The closest I can come to any analogy is this. Okay, close your eyes and think about me trying to sell a crystal to Rupert Murdoch. Let’s see now. It’s a Friday and the man himself is visiting London to install a new Government. Meets the Millipede at ten with a complete program for Labour Government policies over the next five years. Deal’s done by eleven. Next stop the Queen at twelve. Inspects Palace guard then tells her what he proposes over tea and homemade scones. Gets the nod by one but can’t stay for lunch. Sorry he’s having the afternoon off in London spending time with old friends. Visiting the National Gallery two to three then a walkabout in a famous market nearby with old News International buddies like Andy, Rebecca and Kelvin, and of course fussy fusspot James, still suffering memory problems, will also be there.
Rupert’s been living in America for so long that he’s forgotten what London is like from his time there in the eighties when, with his dear friend Maggie’s help, the police dealt with picket lines of striking print workers at Wapping where he was shifting the Sun. That said he needs a bit of assistance finding his way around these days and who better to step up to the plate than an old friend of News International from the Yard.
Now remember, before Rupert gets to the stall… I want you to think about how much you enjoyed Rolf Harris being on your screens four decades or more – almost longer than seems humanly possible – but then he’s a media creation after all. About as Australian as Muffin the Mule. No, if it’s a real Australian you want, albeit with American nationality, Rupert’s your man.
So, the great man at the stall four-thirty sharp and Rebecca’s curlies already over a basket of crystals. I don’t feel overawed in any way as so many might but maybe it’s the affable reassuring smile of the nice policeman making me feel that all is well and that I’m in the company of friends.
“How yer doing sport?” I ask in my best imitation Sydney accent. “ Nice to see yer looking good for a change, Rupe, what with all that shit that’s been coming your way lately. Thought you did a great job on that Sunday paper. S’got your hands all over it mate. A real professional job.”
And I tell you that right there in that market Rupe lit a real cracker. The man smiled like he hadn’t a care in the world. All those troubles of his lifted.
“Nice of you to say it mate,” he came back.
“Pleasure, I acknowledged. “All those celebrities saying all that shit and wanting money out of you and all. None of them bothering to think they wouldn’t even be worth hacking unless your papers made them into the media celebrities they are today sport.”
Kelvin capped it all with a blaster. “Too effing right mate!”
Yeah I was right, sure I was right and everyone nodded appreciatively. You didn’t need to be a genius to understand the truth of the matter. Even this humble guy on the market they’d come across knew what was what. A plain ordinary Englishman who knew the real truth! Out of the corner of my eye I saw the smiling policeman nodding his head like a donkey and the pasty-faced Rebecca showing me a full set of pearlies. David Cameron knew them all. It brought the Conservative Party so close to the Sun and thereby the people. Four million working class readers! Couldn’t be bad! Sorry Milliboy, you’re kissing the wrong arse right now. You need to find something really good to give away like a television channel.
Anyway, back to selling Rupert a crystal, or dare I think of it, possibly a gem tree! I wanted to suggest something nice but felt I should best leave it to him. He seemed indecisive. Maybe he had too much on his mind. So many journalists on his flagship newspaper arrested for criminal behaviour. What would old friend Maggie Thatcher say? They’d been so close back in the eighties, her, the Sun and Young Rupert. Those were the days and there was the Sun, shining out of her arse as it attacked the striking print workers and miners with the police naturally doing their bit. Later of course there was always New Labour with Tony becoming part of the family.
For a moment I thought I was going to lose a sale. Having eyed up some of the trees the man was about to move on. I kept on thinking about how many celebrity writers loved him, all those great novelists like Geoffrey Archer who’d played such an important part in Maggie’s Government and other stars of Harper Collins, the book publishing company Rupert owned. Celebrities! Apart from television that’s where the money was. The man understood what people wanted. He understood the working class better than they understood themselves and gave them all what they wanted. I’d really like to have sold him one of my gem trees. He could put it on the desk in his office and think of England!
The majestic sweep of his hand interrupted my thoughts. There, his finger had stopped at small piece of rose quartz. Madagascan. Good colour and quality. “Nice piece that,” he chuckled. “Give you a fiver for it.”
“It’s a healing stone,” I said soothingly. “Helps you relax. Rekindles all the warmth of your spirit.”
“A fiver then?” he said looking sharp.
“It’ll bring harmony. Make you feel peaceful,” I chattered. “Five pounds is a fair price.”
He didn’t want it wrapped up. After James gave me the money in coins his father walked away from the stall holding the piece in his hand. And I knew even then that he was already picking up powerful vibrations. Good on yer mate, I thought. Now everyone would see him for the man that he was, an Australian with a warm, caring side to his nature.
It’s something that brings me back to the point of this post, a question I meant to ask you at the beginning. Hands up all of you who believe in angels and fairies?
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